The old adage of ‘buy low, sell high’ seems fitting, given the battering shares the world over have taken in the past while. The NZX and Dow Jones industrial averages, for example, are both down around a quarter from their respective values six months ago.

But just when is the market ‘low’?

I don’t know! If I did, I’m sure I’d be a lot wealthier than I am. However, I thought it would be useful to write a blog entry to stimulate discussion and debate on what TVHE readers are picking for the sharemarket:

Is now a good time to buy?

What industries/companies would you consider investing it?

What factors are influencing your decisions to invest, or not?

I look forward to hearing our readers’ views on the current state of the sharemarket.

The question is: faced with this situation again would we do something different to address it? To my mind, this question should lead economies to consider whether monetary policy, fiscal policy, and prudential policy should be more counter-cyclical, and lean against credit growth in an upswing

Now, this by itself tells me very little. Simply put, John Key appears to be saying that “credit market policy” should be counter-cyclical. Now, just 18 months ago people were complaining about interest rates being too high – that is counter-cyclical monetary policy guys, and it helps to tighten domestic credit markets. Our institutions have been relatively prudent (as lenders and households actually do face the risk associated with there decisions, unlikethe US 😛 ).

Of course, there is more to this statement than just that – there are good inferences and a bad inferences to make from the flavour of the speech. Let me sketch them out – then we can discuss them, or whether these inferences are fair 🙂

Or so Russel Norman said when asked by Paul Henry earlier this week what the most common misconception about the Greens is. What do you think? I’m going to try a poll for the first time ever on tvhe, hopefully it works:)

I’ll be honest and admit I stopped reading the article after the paragraph i’m about to reproduce so I’m open to accusations of trolling, but this was little gem

“Reducing saving by cutting KiwiSaver is the same as increasing debt. It won’t show on the Government’s balance sheet, because Key has swapped Government debt for private debt. Lower savings will show up on households’ balance sheets as increased private debt, which is already too high,” Ms Fitzsimons says.

In the wake of the collapse, it was clear that if Lehman couldn’t be trusted, then it would be silly to trust any other troubled financial institution, either — AIG, WaMu, Wachovia, Fortis, Hypo Real Estate, you name it.

This breakdown in “trust” destroyed the delicate equilibrium we were in, and has sent us spinning towards a worse set of outcomes.

Fundamentally, this has happened because “trust” (the fact that we would be playing a “infinitely” repeated game, which then rewards people for collusive behaviour) had allowed us to bypass the asymmetric information problem inherent in the market. With that trust gone, no-one will lend or purchases assets, as they think that only the worst deals are available on the market.

In this light, the behaviour of Lehman appears to be a major factor behind the crisis we now find ourselves in – damned investment banks 😛

100 basis points slashed by the Reserve Bank of Australia. There cash rate is now 6%. A 50 basis point cut was expected, 75 seemed possible, 100 is epic.

At the start of the recent freeze in credit markets a 75 basis point cut by the RBNZ seemed highly unlikely – but possible. Now a 75 basis point cut is looking increasingly likely – and 100 basis points also seems possible. To put this in perspective – the Bank may have felt that a 50 point cut in October was on the cards following the September cut. Financing costs have now moved up so much that it is (sort of) like the previous cut never happened – implying we need a 100 basis points of cuts just to get where the Bank was aiming, maybe 😛

Does this indicate that the economic situation for Australiasia has deteriorated rapidly – yes and no.

A popular explanation of the booming in house prices according to, well, everyone is that there was lots of “credit washing around” which convinced people that they should go and bid up house prices. An example of this logic is shown in this statement at the very good Big Picture blog:

The bubble in home prices, fueled by the ready availability of credit, resulted in an underestimate of the risks of residential real estate

Personally, I think this type of thinking has the causality all mixed up – if there was any error it was because people “underestimated the risks” associated with the price of residential real estate, and therefore given the “price” of credit the housing market appeared to be a better bet than it actually was. As a result, the entire blame for the bubble and associated crisis should lie with the fact that risk wasn’t being appropriately identified – not with some mystical belief that credit was springing up all over the place. If the risk problem was unsolvable, then we can blame central banks for leaving the price of credit (not its “availability) to low – however, this is a secondary issue to risk.

The whole concept of the “availability of credit” is somewhat of a misnomer.